We relish in the kindness of strangers, and we especially love watching this play out in community swap forums, like yard sales and flea markets or even virtually on sites like eBay and Craigslist. That’s why we had to revisit one of our very first (and still all time favorite) posts: The Power of Craigslist.

I’m still amazed that this experiment worked, but basically we got a bunch of strangers to laboriously dig up all the bushes and haul away the pea gravel from our heavily manicured backyard (seen below during our wedding) to make way for the grassy, puppy-playground that we now enjoy (pictured further below last November).

You’ll have to read the post to find out exactly how it all went down- just forgive us if anything looks majorly amateur – it was only our fourth post!

Just like some of the original readers back in September of last year (all 8 or so of you) – you may be feeling some heartburn over us destroying the beautiful garden that the previous owner had painstakingly groomed. And I’ll admit that we even had some hesitations ourselves when we started the process last fall…

But now that it’s been a year, I can say with 100% certainty that it was the best decision ever. It’s totally easy to maintain (no more weeding that gravel path to nowhere! no more trimming a million hedges!) and it makes our yard look much bigger (while creating Burger’s own personal outdoor paradise). There’s not a day he’s not out there chasing squirrels, fetching sticks and otherwise running amuck. And since I can’t seem to get a good photo of him in action, I can only submit this shot of him catching his breath (and some rays) in the grass as evidence.

Now we wanna to hear all of your great Craiglist, eBay or yard sale stories. Got an amazing find to share or another smart tip for using sites like those in unconvential ways? Give us the goods, kind people. And share the hope that some of the best things in life are, in fact, almost free.

39 Comments

Here in London I have made excellent use of freecycle: people came and took away some old clothes, some spare copies of magazines, our bread bin and many other odds and ends and in return we collected 2 chest of drawers, a full length mirror (without frame – so we really need some ideas about where to put it), an original steamer trunk which we are using as a coffee table and some photo frames.

I think gardens look best when they are well used and loved, whatever they look like. If manicured gardens (if you can call them that) took too much maintenance I think a large lawn is just as fab – and more space for croquet and childrens games if and when they come…

I discovered your blog a couple weeks ago and the timing couldn’t have been better as I am about to embark on some major painting and room redecorating projects. This has been a great source of tips and ideas! Thanks!

I would say that about 2/3 of my house has been furnished from craigslist: the beautiful west elm mirror for $25 (still sells for $149 on the website), the Room and Board sectional for $640 (original price exceeds $2,000), my set of 4 white OH! chairs for for less than the cost of 1. Come to think of it, I found my house on craigslist! All of my kitchen appliances too!

Here is my craigslist story – My husband and I curbed a pool table (some peeps got evicted and we went through their junk) – threw it in the truck – dumped it in the garage – through the miracle of craigslist – sold it for $600. the. next. day.

same thing happened with a bidet – scored a free $35 – only it was kinda gross to think that we were handling a used bathroom fixture :)

We needed to get out of a lease in North Carolina to move to Texas. If we broke the lease we’d incur almost as much in fees as we would have to spend to just pay for the rest of the lease. So we listed the place on CL, and we found someone to take over the rest of the lease for us. He got a great deal on a beautiful place to live (rent had gone up tremendously in the area, but we were still locked in at a lower price), and we got out of the lease with a total cost of $0!

When we moved in our first house, we found two dozens of mason jars filled with UNKNOWN ingredients in basement. Obviously previous owner canned something a long time ago… We were scared, didn’t even bother opening them. ;)

We had a couple of other things we wanted to get rid of, so we posted all of them for free on craigslist.

Believe or not, we got 7-8 replies for the mason jars right away! LOL. That was the first thing sold among several items we posted on CL.

I found my wedding photographer on Craigslist! She had years of experience doing wedding photography as part of a firm, but when she left to start her own business, she had to start her portfolio from scratch because all of her previous photos belonged to her old firm. She was already going to do the photos for a few hundred dollars (a *STEAL* for wedding photography here in Chicago), but I told her I had some experience in web design and offered her a website for her budding business. So, bartering a website for wedding photography, I got my fabulous professional wedding photographer for free!

I used CL to find a place to live in Boston while in grad school. My fiance and I have used it to get rid it of furniture/appliances that we don’t need. And if my brother in law doesn’t come pick up some large landscaping rocks we have left over from a fish pond that broke, I’m putting those on CL as well.

I think you should know that you have misnamed your dog =). If you check these websites, you will find that the LOLcat and LOLdog community have established that burgers are for kittehs and hotdogs (drumroll) are for doggies. Perhaps you could adopt a kitteh and name it Hotdog!

Oh, yes, I’ve scored a million and one great things at yardsales, but just last weekend, I got a freebie while yardsaling. A really gorgeous outdoor fountain which I’ll be setting up next spring along with a little landscaping project. I posted it on my Monday’s post this week if anyone wants to peek!

I came here to let everyone know about Freecycle, but someone beat me to it! I’ll just reiterate: Freecycle is GREAT. A little more involved than CL in that you have to join and abide by the rules, which are simple, but you can find some amazing stuff (if you’re fast!) on there AND get rid of things lickety-split. What you can’t do, though, is do a cattle-call for anything you want to freecycle — but you would be surprised what people will give and take on there. Keeping things out of the landfill, if at all possible, is the name of the game. I used it in Richmond many times with great success. Anyway, hope it inspires some people to check it out.

Oh and Lauren, those two websites are recent discoveries of John’s and he guffaws over them. Literally. Just sits in a chair laughing out loud. Hysterical. And on the topic of animal names, we once saw a pup named Tater Tot at a pet adoption and almost took him home just because of his name. I mean Hamburger and Tater Tot…. it doesn’t get much better than that.

I took your advice and posted on CL free landscaping shrubs and within 30 min. someone was calling begging me to save them for her. I even reminded her that she had to dig them up and she was so excited to be getting 34 FEET of free shrubs that she didn’t care. We’ll see tomorrow how excited she is when she and her hubby have to dig them up.

Thanks for the great ideas! Oh, and I think I’m in need of a major makeover from you guys…..I’m still mulling it over.

I once had rocks that kept getting in the way of my grass mowing. Some one on craigslist went all over my yard digging them up. Some other guy came around asking for them. All gone I said. Turned out that they were landscaping rocks and worth fifty cents a pound :(

A tenant up and left leaving the entire (crappy) contents of a unit. I posted 100 pictures of it on craigslist and after a couple of pickers, a family new to canada brought the garbage bags and almost emptied the place. After the last few knick knacks dissapeared, I only needed to get rid of 3 garbage bags to the land fill.

I made a *really* bad patio out of shipping pallets. They were so ugly, and it was time to get rid of it. Somebody took nine broke pallets for fire wood. Soo much work for useless pallets!

The free section of craigslist has run it’s course unfortunately as I find it better to just take it to the good will…..

I moved to DC 7 years ago and have gotten every job and rental I’ve had up here from an ad on craigslist. But on freecycle, I once got a car! My boss had told me that I needed a car for my job or he’d have to let me go. Luckily a woman posted an ad wanting to donate her non-working car to a charity. I sent her an email asking her to consider my plight if she didn’t have a charity contact her.

She did, and gave the car to me!

Turns out it needed a transmission which at the dealer would have cost $5K! So, I picked one up at a friend’s wrecking yard. I brought the car and transmission to a mechanic (who I found on CL), He fixed the car and got it ready for emissions, and cleared the safety check… Total bill including the rebuilt tranny, $1720.00.

A few months later my company lost a HUGE client, and I was a casualty in the layoffs.

We just bought our first home knowing that we would need to put in new cabinets and appliances. However that meant we needed to tear out the old ones and haul them away. We are working with Home Depot and they were going to charge us like $700 or something just to tear out our old cabinets.

I ended up putting up our appliances on craigslist and a real estate agent who also rents out some apartments on the side bought them. I remembered what you said in regards to free labor on CL so I told him we’d also be putting up our cabinets on CL soon but if he wanted them he could have first dibs. He ended up buying them AND completely tearing them out for us.

So he basically paid us to tear out our cabinets for us. Good deal! I didn’t advertise for him to tear them out because you don’t want just anyone to do that. But since I knew he was reputable, I “offered” it to him! :-)

I love freecycle & CL. I lost many so many plants and small shrubs due to VOLES(horrible little critters that feed on roots). I posted my dilemma on freecycle asking if anyone would share some plants with me from their garden and offered to do the digging. I was overwhelmed with the response. In turn, I met some great folks that I could help out with some furniture and kids clothes that we no longer needed. I’m so happy that I found your blog – wonderful ideas and inspiration! Thanks, Page

I love love love your blog and in fact reference it in my blog all of the time. I also write a green home remodeling column for an online magazine in Los Angeles called Your Daily Thread. I just came across your post here and thought I’d share a similar story I wrote for them. Thanks for your blog!

I replaced my deck in May and had a ton of lumber leftover that I didn’t want to take to the dump! I posted it for free on craigslist and also had strangers come and haul it away – the somewhat rotted wood went to building a chicken coop on a farm an hour away from me and was also taken to be used for edging in several gardens, including a community garden near my boyfriend’s house. It felt so good to have the old lumber go to new homes for new uses!

Thank you for this advice! I am buying my first house and we had this gigantic home-made shed in the back yard which had to be gone before we moved in, per the inspector. I posted an ad on Craigslist that it was free to whoever took it, and had someone call less than 30 minutes later!

Your idea saved me a day of hot sweating labor and the cost of a trip to the dump.

I have a question about this. I loved the idea when I read it and I mentioned it to my mom (I still live with her, so ultimately she makes the decisions around here haha). We have this bush that over the years has grown into a HUGE overbearing “tree” outside of our front door and I just want to see it gone ASAP. Unfortunately the back of it is a little dead, but we do have a “black thumb,” so perhaps those with green thumbs may know how to give it life again? Anyway, my question is: were you at all concerned about strangers coming to your house to dig up your shrubbery? My mom said she’d be too nervous advertising our address and having strangers show up at our house with a shovel and pickaxe lol…which I totally understand. It does sound scary and you just never know with people these days!

We have had nothing but great craigslist interactions, but if it’s beyond your comfort zone we’d never push it on you or anything! Most people love anything for free – and not even having to let them into your house, just letting them get to work outside seemed pretty risk-free. Of course if you have a sprinkler system that you’re afraid they’ll dig up that’s another story! Haha. The sad thing is that if your tree is dead on one side it might not be savable. Maybe try bringing a pic to a greenhouse to see what they think and if they think it can be saved then try craigslist if you’re comfortable? Good luck!

About

Hey, we're Sherry & John. This is where we chronicled 7 years of our lives as we fixed up 3 homes, had 2 children, became accidental authors and product designers, and shared our adventures (and misadventures) with the world. Now it's a time capsule of sorts, complete with nearly 3,000 posts, projects, and updates.